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Contact:
Tracy Warren
Phone: 703-907-5746
Mobile: 703-517-3411

Wright-Hennepin Vice President Sonja Bogart and Board Chair Chris Lantto receive NCS Award from NRECA president F.E. "Wally" Wolski. Photo Credit: Michael Lynch

Atlanta, Georgia, February 15, 2010 – The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association awarded Wright-Hennepin Cooperative Electric Association the Association’s National Community Service Award for Energy Efficiency. The Rockford, Minnesota-based co-op received the award at NRECA’s 2010 Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

At a time when many American families are struggling to pay their energy bills, Wright-Hennepin CEA is empowering its consumer members to reduce their electricity use with its innovative “MyMeter” program. Co-op consumer-members now have access to detailed daily information about their energy consumption via a secure website, which also allows them to compare their use to that of their neighborhood and set conservation goals.

The Wright-Hennepin CEA program is pointing the way for the utility industry. In 2008, the co-op completed the installation of 38,000 smart meters and began a marketing campaign to inform members about the new service. Ten percent of the co-ops members are using the secure website – one customer has logged on over 1,000 times since signing up a year ago.

“Wright-Hennepin ECA’s energy efficiency program shows how the cooperative business model can drive innovation,” said F.E. “Wally” Wolski, president of the NRECA Board of Directors. “The co-op did not set out just to be an innovator – the co-op set out to improve service for consumer-members and ended up creating an innovative program that boosted their ACSI customer satisfaction rating to a record score of 91.”

With the new smart meters, Wright-Hennepin can track energy saved by consumers and may soon be able to count these savings towards the 1.5 percent reduction in energy use required under Minnesota state law. This approach will likely mean savings for the cooperative, which would otherwise have to rely solely on efficiency rebates to encourage electric use reductions.

The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is the national service organization that represents the nation’s more than 900 private, not-for-profit, consumer-owned electric cooperatives, which provide service to 42 million people in 47 states.

More than 9,000 representatives from cooperative electric utilities across the nation are attending the NRECA Annual Meeting, February 15-17, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, during which they will set NRECA’s legislative and organizational agenda for 2010. In addition to considering and acting upon policy resolutions, delegates receive reports from NRECA officials, hear addresses by key public figures and business experts, and attend panel sessions on major issues affecting electric cooperatives and their consumer owners.

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